Trump’s rhetoric threatens peace-making in Korean peninsula

Cautious overtures to Kim Jong-un from the South being undermined by the US

Despite the painstaking efforts of Moon Jae-in, South Korea’s president, to use this week’s opening of the Winter Olympics to build bridges with North Korea, Donald Trump remains locked on a dangerous collision course with what he calls Kim Jong-un’s “depraved regime”.

Kim’s last-minute acceptance of Moon’s invitation to send a North Korean delegation to the Games, which get under way in Pyeongchang on Friday, raised hopes that tensions with the US and its allies over the North’s nuclear weapons build-up and missile tests may be defused, at least in part. North Korea agreed to send nearly two dozen athletes, cheerleaders and an orchestra in a delegation numbering more than 200 people.